Can materialistic science answer life’s big questions? |317|

I'm not commenting on PSI here, but rather on the idea that we are deliberately being kept in the dark. My feeling is the complete opposite. It seems much more likely that there are vast numbers of benevolent intelligences who are actively communicating with us. And more importantly, there are those who are asking us to listen to them, but who can often only look on as we blindly stumble along.

Maybe true BUT i) they haven't materialised in my living room ii) they don't answer my emails iii) they aren't on Oprah.
 
Maybe true BUT i) they haven't materialised in my living room ii) they don't answer my emails iii) they aren't on Oprah.

Please don't take this personally, as I'm considering things more broadly. To quote Bruce Greyson, "If you ignore everything paranormal about NDEs then it’s easy to conclude that there is nothing paranormal about them". So long as we ignore communications from the beyond, it's easy to say there are none.

There are two barriers. One, a scientific worldview which rules that such things are impossible. Two, the traditional teachings of the church which ruled that such things were the work of satan. Caught between two such dominant views, who then dares to listen?
 
Please don't take this personally, as I'm considering things more broadly. To quote Bruce Greyson, "If you ignore everything paranormal about NDEs then it’s easy to conclude that there is nothing paranormal about them". So long as we ignore communications from the beyond, it's easy to say there are none.

There are two barriers. One, a scientific worldview which rules that such things are impossible. Two, the traditional teachings of the church which ruled that such things were the work of satan. Caught between two such dominant views, who then dares to listen?
Also, and again this is a general rather than personal response, the idea that "they haven't materialised in my living room" is to look in the wrong place. One's living room is fine, nothing wrong with that. But to look in the material world for the non-physical is to look in the wrong place.

In this hectic, noisy modern world it is easy to undervalue the richest resource we have, our own consciousness. There we may seek.
 
-The fact that God has allowed evil for a long time does not mean that God will allow it forever. The Bible ends with the Kingdom and peace on Earth (after the mayhem of the Apocalypse).

Why has this supposedly benevolent God allowed evil for such a long time?
And why the mayhem you speak about? Couldn't he stop evil in a less destructive way?
And how come he will one day change his mind? This appears to be predetermined, since you say it's in the Bible. Is everything predetermined, too, then according to your theory?
 
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I'm not commenting on PSI here, but rather on the idea that we are deliberately being kept in the dark. My feeling is the complete opposite. It seems much more likely that there are vast numbers of benevolent intelligences who are actively communicating with us. And more importantly, there are those who are asking us to listen to them, but who can often only look on as we blindly stumble along.

We are most definitely kept in the dark because a lot of these "intelligences" appear to be saying different things -and that is why we are here discussing different metaphysical theories: there is most definitely no agreement as to the nature of reality on the part of mankind.
 
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I don't usually try to deal with this because I think it's one of the ultimate questions for which we are not going to get the answer (here anyway... nor remember it when we come back from "there" which already sounds like complete bollocks to many people)

What Laird is asking is from where comes evil, why do bad things happen to people, how can a loving God allow concentration camps, children getting cancer the list is endless. Obviously for me to suggest that "I" know the answer to these problems is the height of idiocy and I don't even have a PHD so in some people's eyes that makes it even worse.

But my thoughts are this. We've (probably) always existed, we (probably) leave the perfect existence to experience the "not perfect" so that we can then go back and realise just how perfect and fantastic the perfect place is with the perfect "us" in it. If we didn't have some "crap" experience from the earth do compare it to, how would we know it was so good.

As regards children getting cancer (which is one of the favourite atheist "sticks" to bash "god" with and understandably so) how can that NOT happen sometimes.... with the way we've organised our world. Children also fall out of skyscrapers, get eaten by sharks, choke on grapes etc. What should we do ? Don't build skyscrapers ? Kill all the sharks, don't allow grapes to exist ? Get rid of everything that threatens to harm anyone, what kind of absurd world would that be ?

And if children are "spirits" (returning to experience some more of this "crap" that we have to deal with down here) and they "know" they are fundamentally indestructible beings and the "body" is only a costume etc then would it matter ultimately ?

These are some of my gut feelings about existence but that's all they are and I don't pretend otherwise.

Thank you for admitting that this is your gut feeling - it doesn't make much sense to me but if you find it satisfactory and it helps you in your life, fine. I am not here to criticise people's views but to try to make sense of things.

As for your comments about us humans being guilty of the bad things that happen because of how we've organised our world: first of all, human nature (which is capable of horrors) is not our choice - we were created with the possibility of doing wrong, so you could say that it's a "programming mistake" (or a voluntary choice) on the part of "whatever has created us" - and moreover not all bad things are man-made; no need for me to repeat what Laird has already expressed very well (I copy and paste):

"But can this view really account for the extremities of evil in this world? What “lesson” could be worth the Holocaust, or the years-long, gruesome torture of a victim of a psychopathic paedophile? Whilst the problem of evil is a huge subject on which much could be written, I will briefly highlight only three points which bring the above theodicy into serious question. First, that natural disasters which cause much suffering seem not to be related – at least directly – to free will choices, and second, that nor does the inherently cruel and violent systemic need for some creatures to have to kill others in order to survive seem to be directly related to free will choices. If either of these areindirectly related to free will choices, then this would seem to be an unnecessarily created relationship. Either way, they seem to be incompatible with a good, all-powerful God who desires to teach His creatures (how to) love: surely, such a being could come up with a less violent way to teach; surely, learning how to love is incompatible with having to kill others to survive (hardly a loving act). Third, that the possibility to choose evil does not seem to be necessary for genuine free will: God Himself presumably has free will, yet He is incapable of evil choices. Why, then, would He endow His creatures with a lesser nature? And if God does not have free will, then what need is there for free will in the first place? If an absence of free will works fine for God, then why not for us, as His creations?"


Just one clarification: according to your description above, however, this would not be a school (contradiction with your previous post) - you have just written that we go back and forth (voluntarily? Or are we "kicked back" here?) so it's like an oscillation (between perfection and imperfection) and not a movement forward.
 
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Thank you for admitting that this is your gut feeling

I'm beginning to wish I hadn't :)

human nature (which is capable of horrors) is not our choice - we were created with the possibility of doing wrong, so you could say that it's a "programming mistake

Human nature is obviously the result of some creative power be it pure chance or design. I agree with Freud, we are not "masters" in our own house....to a degree that is. But I still believe we have free will, I know I have and that is all I can know.

natural disasters which cause much suffering

Yes, but they are clearly natural so has there been a "cock up" in God's architecture or a cock up in random chance's ? I would say neither, the planet is alive, it moves and it's inhabitants sometimes suffer the consequences (unfortunately)


the inherently cruel and violent systemic need for some creatures to have to kill others in order to survive

You could start a new thread just on that problem alone. What seems inherently cruel to us may not be inherently cruel. I don't like to see any kind of harm done to creatures.Believe it or not, at night when I sometimes go outside to drop an empty wine bottle in the recycling bin, I see snails traversing a piece of my drive. I know where they are trying to get to (a nice secluded wet area of grass) and I know that some other creatures will eat them if they are spotted. So I pick them up, give them an airlift to sanctuary.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing, saving the snail but making the creature that wants to eat it hungry. I don't know and I don't have the answer to the above question nor does anyone else. "God" probably has the answer (if he exists which believe "he/she/it" does)

These "objections" to the existence of a loving force that cares for us are legitimate but I don't see how they can be used to debunk survival ?
 
Timelessness seems to change everything, because on the face of it, without time most verbs become meaningless. For example, to 'discover' means to go from a state with less knowledge to one with more. Concepts like spiritual enrichment likewise imply a before state and an after one. This suggests to me that understanding what reality is all about may be all but impossible. Perhaps the inexpressibility that so many express about parts of their experience, reflects this very point.
great point. funny how we all seem to generally accept this point, but never come to grips with how fully it undermines so many of our assumptions. I think you're right to say that it makes understanding reality impossible.
 
-The fact that God has allowed evil for a long time does not mean that God will allow it forever. The Bible ends with the Kingdom and peace on Earth (after the mayhem of the Apocalypse).

Could this crazy stuff be part of the Apocalypse? Consider:

i) Chapter 12 of David Jacob’s book The Threat: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/thethread/thethread12.htm

Sounds Apocalyptic to me.

ii) I estimate that 20% of very deep NDEs are Apocalyptic
great point, but I lean on David's point about time. The evidence I find most compelling points towards time being the ultimate illusion. Once our perception of time is taken out of the equation all this other stuff looks very different.
 
You could start a new thread just on that problem alone. What seems inherently cruel to us may not be inherently cruel. I don't like to see any kind of harm done to creatures.Believe it or not, at night when I sometimes go outside to drop an empty wine bottle in the recycling bin, I see snails traversing a piece of my drive. I know where they are trying to get to (a nice secluded wet area of grass) and I know that some other creatures will eat them if they are spotted. So I pick them up, give them an airlift to sanctuary.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing, saving the snail but making the creature that wants to eat it hungry. I don't know and I don't have the answer to the above question nor does anyone else. "God" probably has the answer (if he exists which believe "he/she/it" does)

These "objections" to the existence of a loving force that cares for us are legitimate but I don't see how they can be used to debunk survival ?

Thank you for your comments Tim. Incidentally, I'm not trying to debunk survival (?? when did I say that??), just to better understand the point of view of those who insist that this incarnation is a school. Incidentally you didn't reply to my question ("oscillation rather than progression", see my previous post addressed to you). I'm stil interested though :-)

It's very sweet of you to care about those snails. You are so kind in fact that you give "God" (or whatever has designed this material world where indeed harm IS done to creatures - and all the time in fact, due the very design of it: "nature red in tooth and claw") the benefit of the doubt, i.e.: as you admitted yourself you can't win here because if you help some creatures very often some others will go hungry, but you are still willing to believe that it makes sense 'in the mind of God', although it obviously doesn't make sense for us or people wouldn't be discussing this since time immemorial (I quote you: "I don't know and I don't have the answer to the above question nor does anyone else. "God" probably has the answer (if he exists which believe "he/she/it" does)").

I respect your choice of believing that God has an answer but again, here we are talking human logic and you (by that I mean all those who believe in a benevolent God) are conveniently passing over this question, saying basically "God knows" :-). Which is exactly my point: his logic is not our logic, or we would understand him straightaway. So "God" (and I put him in inverted commas because I don't know if there's a single "mastermind" with intentions behind our consensus reality) is alien to us, incomprehensible - at best, some of us (like you and those with faith in a benevolent deity) can choose to give him the benefit of the doubt, thus choosing to deny the evidence of a consensus reality that patently contradicts your God's supposed benevolence towards his creatures.
 
great point, but I lean on David's point about time. The evidence I find most compelling points towards time being the ultimate illusion. Once our perception of time is taken out of the equation all this other stuff looks very different.

But if one experiences time as an illusion, that experience still represents the passage of time?

Additionally it seems odd once can be in time, experience time is an illusion, and return back into the flow of time? Seems I can divide this into three parts:

T1: Before timelessness

T2: In timelessness

T3: After timelessness

Isn't this only possible if the assumed timelessness at T2 is in time?
 
T1: Before timelessness

T2: In timelessness

T3: After timelessness

Isn't this only possible if the assumed timelessness at T2 is in time?
Presumably that's the view from here, (in either T1 or T3). But viewed from within T2, how would it look? I suppose T2 could encompass all of T1,T2 and T3 (and beyond).
 
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UOTE="hypermagda, post: 92290, member: 2752"]Thank you for your comments Tim. Incidentally, I'm not trying to debunk survival (?? when did I say that??),[/QUOTE]

Well I sort of thought you were defending the rational atheist position, that "God" by his works and creation is not good ...and therefore it makes no sense to believe in "God" and I guess I sort of connect "God" with survival through what I've read about NDE's and all the rest of the phenomena.

you have just written that we go back and forth (voluntarily? Or are we "kicked back" here?) so it's like an oscillation (between perfection and imperfection) and not a movement forward.

I don't know if we go back and forth, I think we do based on my own memories (of which I am 100% certain about) and the testimony of others but I may not have been back and forth more than twice. I don't think that's likely but I don't know. I wasn't kicked back, I was perfectly happy to come here, supercharged with a determination to sort out problems with the world (these memories are so strong) . I thought it was going to be a breeze, but I've sorted out in the scheme of things, practically nothing ! The world won.

It's very sweet of you to care about those snails.

So you don't think I need my bumps feeling ? The wife does.:)

as you admitted yourself you can't win here because if you help some creatures very often some others will go hungry, but you are still willing to believe that it makes sense 'in the mind of God',

It must make sense in the mind of "God" if "God" exists. It's no use asking me though, it would only be an opinion.

Which is exactly my point: his logic is not our logic, or we would understand him straightaway.

Yes, or we would understand him straightaway. Right, as people claim to during near death experience.... but somehow they have difficulty bringing the answers back. I was recently talking to an NDEr who had a mind boggling experience. When he awoke from a three week coma he asked the nurse to ask him any question she wanted as he knew the answer but to hurry up because it (the knowledge) was fading fast . He claimed to have experienced TOTAL understanding of everything, said it was absolute bliss amongst other things.[/QUOTE]
 
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Thanks both to those who have contributed posts and to those who have offered kind words. Here are a few responses collected into one.

It's an odd title for the show thread, given the essay in question seems to cover a much larger question than materialist science?

Mmm, I would probably have chosen to omit "materialistic", and maybe substituted "a broadly scientific approach" for "materialistic science", but it's Alex's show, and he gets to choose the titles that are going to most pique people's interest. As you say, no biggie.

I suspect that if it's true there are subtle worlds interlocking with our worldy consensus reality many of the options might be true.

Nice. The existence of subtle worlds could probably be turned into a data point in itself: there is all sorts of evidence for these worlds ranging from shamanic experiences to OBEs, NDEs and mediumistic communications with spirits from within these worlds.

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[M]ost accounts of mystical experiences of all sorts [...] seem to contain [a] sense of timelessness.

Yes, and yet I find this curious, because many (most?) of those same accounts seem to contain active experiences: communications with other beings, and travel through scenes. This seems to imply time. My guess is that rather than literal timelessness, time is simply experienced in a radically different way during these experiences than in "ordinary" reality. [I drafted that part of this post before Sci offered his own critique of timelessness, which I think is to the point.]

Possibly the most wretched, evil experiences don't impact on us for more than a certain length of time.

Possibly, but does that make them any more justifiable (more on this below in response to tim)? And over the course of history, they seem to have been pretty persistent in general.

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[T]he problem [is that] we may be unable to make logical sense of the intentions of "something"/"someone"/"some beings" whose nature is so different from ours.

That's a possibility, and, as David points out, many subjects of mystical experiences report being unable to express that which they experienced and understood. I am, though, more optimistic about this, and I think that anyway we should do our best to exhaust the possibility of rational explanation (even if based on mystical insight/intuition/revelation) before throwing up our hands and saying "It's impossible to understand!"

A lot of people here appear to enjoy the mystery. I don't.

Nor do I, and nor do I find any explanation I've heard or considered for "the veil" especially plausible - particularly the ones involving an omnipotent and loving God.

Thanks for taking up my request and elaborating on your demiurge-as-amoral-artist hypothesis. :-)

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Now that's a personal view. But maybe that's as good an answer as there is - there are as many answers as there are people.

How maddeningly post-modern! I say that with affection though, Typoz, because you always speak from a good heart: healing and restorative indeed. :-)

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Would those who have expressed their preference for a specific option (#2 in particular) be so kind as to answer Laird's questions (I copy and paste some excerpts from his post below) so that we can follow the logical reasoning who made them opt for it?

Thanks, Magda. A freewheeling discussion is of course just fine, and I wouldn't want to interrupt it, but a methodical approach is also useful, which I hope the blog post demonstrated.

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Tim, I know you weren't speaking definitively, and you were just expressing what seems right to you, so I hope you don't mind me addressing your comments in the way that I'm about to.

If we didn't have some "crap" experience from the earth do compare [the perfect existence] to, how would we know it was so good.

This seems to be a pretty popular argument/opinion, and it was thrashed out from page #3 to page #5 of the "Puzzling NDE questions" thread last year. I take the opposite view, as expressed by Kai, Bucky and others in that exchange.

As regards children getting cancer (which is one of the favourite atheist "sticks" to bash "god" with and understandably so) how can that NOT happen sometimes.... with the way we've organised our world. Children also fall out of skyscrapers, get eaten by sharks, choke on grapes etc. What should we do ? Don't build skyscrapers ? Kill all the sharks, don't allow grapes to exist ? Get rid of everything that threatens to harm anyone, what kind of absurd world would that be ?

Isn't this a form of victim-blaming though? i.e. Blaming the occupants of the world for the pitfalls of its design? Shouldn't we really be asking why the design has such pitfalls in the first place? After all, some people spontaneously and miraculously go into remission from cancer: why was the "design choice" not such that all of them do; even that cancer never developed in the first place? Yes, children fall out of skyscrapers, and yet, again, miracles sometimes prevent them from coming to harm: why was it a "design choice" for these miracles to be selective rather than universal? Etc etc. We know that miracles to prevent accidental harm are possible. Why so rare? Or why even require a "miracle" to prevent accidental harm: why not simply design a world without the possibility of accidental harm in the first place? (Of course, all of these questions assume an omnipotent and good creator God, which is the very assumption in question)

And if children are "spirits" (returning to experience some more of this "crap" that we have to deal with down here) and they "know" they are fundamentally indestructible beings and the "body" is only a costume etc then would it matter ultimately ?

But is what "ultimately" matters the point? Yes, suffering is (or seems to be - the possibility of an eternal hell excluded) temporary, but does that make it any more justified? Does the fact that an experience will end, and that we will be able to look back on it and say "it doesn't matter now", make it any more tolerable at the time? Your point could be turned into a pretty deplorable justification for harm by an unethical person: "Hey, ultimately, this isn't going to matter, so shut up and stop complaining while I cut off your fingers one by one with these bolt cutters".

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Not necessarily a mess. In a city you can have prostitution, drug trafficking, reckless gamblers, heartless thieves....but New York also has areas other than Wall Street.

:-D


Haven't listened to that podcast yet, but am very much receptive to the possibility that animism is true (at the same time as theism). Have had an experience which seemed to validate a Dreaming story of indigenous Australians, in which ancestor beings were frozen into a rock formation.

So we don't have an omnipotent God refusing to answer the world's suffering, but rather a God that descends into (or possibly as) lower levels of reality and seeks to push all of this creation back to an enlightened state?

That does make a lot more sense in one way, but as I wrote in the blog post, it's difficult to reconcile with a lot of NDE reports and other STEs which present a more "God's in total control of His reality" (other than free will choices) view rather than a "God's come down here to fix this broken reality" view. It's also difficult to reconcile with the apparent fine-tuning of the universe.

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You write: "Psi is seen to be the natural means of spirit perception/communication, which is inhibited when a spirit’s consciousnes is “filtered” through a brain." To me, this has a big problem which is the index: http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threa...stockholm-syndrome-296.2851/page-2#post-81417

To me, it is more likely that "psi" is spoon fed to us by a separate intelligence(s) than it is likely that this is the product of some kind of "talent" or "gift".

Your conclusion is possibly true but I don't think your argument is sound, because access to some sort of "universal" memory seems to be no more in need of an index than access to "ordinary" memory - so, unless you are to argue that access to ordinary memory is via spoon feeding too, then something seems amiss with your reasoning.

In my opinion, psi is regulated. http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/suggestions-for-alexs-book.698/ There are no mediums with lottery numbers! There are no crashed UFOs (yes, we can argue Roswell). All these subjects are sterile and never progress! How can this be? My answer, we are not dealing with phenomena - we are dealing with intelligences who are deliberately keeping things mysterious. I do believe it is in the plural but I also believe that somebody (God?) is preventing certain information being disclosed (like lottery numbers). God is a God of plausible deniability! Why? Because the important thing is for us to think about it.

You seem to be arguing that there have never been any "obvious" or "indisputable" or "macro-scale" (as opposed to merely statistical) demonstrations of psi or alien encounters, but this is simply not true. Frequently, mediums have been documented providing indisputably correct information, sometimes even novel information that nobody alive knew but which was later confirmed. Some remote viewing sponsored by the US government provided information about e.g. a Russian submarine project, including the date of launch of the submarine itself, that was later confirmed via satellite on that launch date. Alex describes in his book the case of a psychic detective featured on his show whom detectives affirm provided such clear and specific information as allowed them to solve the case, and which a hardened skeptic failed utterly to refute. Etc etc etc etc. Really, the list of examples is very long. You don't seem to have done your homework. :-)

This matrix has no glitches. To me this mitigates against demiurge ideas or ideas where there is an equal battle. Battles leave wreckage!

You don't see any wreckage in this world?! Half of the news these days (which I no longer watch) is wreckage!

It is my “gut feeling” that evil is somehow absurd. I cannot imagine an omniscient being being evil. Just a feeling.

I think you've got the sentiments right but the argument wrong: the existence of evil given an omnipotent and good being is absurd - on that we agree - but when you combine that with the fact that evil does exist, which conclusion do you think follows?

Re conventional Christianity: you and I agree wholeheartedly that there is much truth in it. Yes, the demoniac and satanic exist, and it is very foolish to play around with them. But if God vs Satan is not a real fight, then what on Earth is God doing putting up with this fiend in His world? Why delay the inevitable, with all of the suffering entailed?

I’ll admit I have a bee in my bonnet on this. I was psychotic and delusional about it back in 2009. So, probably you shouldn’t trust me on it

You and I have had very, very similar experiences, Alan. The main difference is that I haven't bought into the psychiatric interpretation of them as much as you seem to have done. Trust your intuition: there are dark forces out there which - for various reasons - sometimes gain access to our psyches. I very much recommend Roy Vincent's (self-published, free) book, listening to the silences in a world of hearing voices. Reading through his own experiences I found effective proof that they were caused by malevolent entities, as I am certain they are in your case and definitely in my own (although I certainly wouldn't rule out divine influence in all cases either). Especially helpful for me was Roy's list of "ploys" used by these malevolent entities. I only recognised some of them, and I have experienced some different ploys that "they" use in my own case, but it was very helpful to find that, yes, other people have recognised that these entities play certain identifiable games with them. Perhaps you will recognise some of the ploys Roy lists, and perhaps you have already identified some different ones that "they" use in your own case.
 
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Yes, and yet I find this curious, because many (most?) of those same accounts seem to contain active experiences: communications with other beings, and travel through scenes. This seems to imply time. My guess is that rather than literal timelessness, time is simply experienced in a radically different way during these experiences than in "ordinary" reality. [I drafted that part of this post before Sci offered his own critique of timelessness, which I think is to the point.
I have noticed this too, and it makes me wonder if people 'out there' manipulate whole time lines in a sort of meta-time. In other words they are striving to push the entire history (and future) of the universe in a positive direction - possibly opposed by others who want to push it in the opposite direction.

David
 
You and I have had very, very similar experiences, Alan. The main difference is that I haven't bought into the psychiatric interpretation of them as much as you seem to have done. Trust your intuition: there are dark forces out there which - for various reasons - sometimes gain access to our psyches.
I can well believe this - though fortunately I have not been attacked in this way. The issue may even have a partly physical basis - possibly some brains don't lock onto a single conscious entity as well as others.

David
 
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